Big Town
Sir:
TIME has done a great public service in its cover story on the big cities [March 23]. I hope the legislators across the country read it and try to understand the tremendous burdens heaped on the modern big city.
The big cities will remain Democratic strongholds forever unless the state decides to treat the cities as equal.
DAVID BARSAMIAN New York City
Sir: Your article "Cities of the '60s" is now required reading for all my sociology classes.
( THE REV. ) ROBERT F. GABEL, O.F.M.
Siena College Loudonville, N.Y.
Sir: To personify Chicago as "a gambling man, a gandy dancer" is belittling. How many places on earth have more colleges and universities ?
GORDON DAHLSTROM Chicago
Sir:
You say Chicago is "a latter-day John Bunyan." John Bunyan ? Never heard of him.
ALLAN B. BROWN
Paul Bunyan Shop Ely, Minn.
>From its slough of despond, TIME confesses it had Legendary Logger Paul Bunyan in mind.--ED.
Sir: The great majority of people go to the big city for employment, not for culture. They sacrifice fresh air, quiet beauty, and time for housing, clothes, and food, not for theaters and museums.
DONN E. HOPKINS Santa Fe, N. Mex.
Sir: Thanks to Daley, Chicago is fast becoming a city Of a few gold-coast areas surrounded by 20-floor ghettos inhabited by aborigines and savages.
FRANK A. ZID
Broadview, III.
Sir:
Excellent within its limited boundary, your article on cities was otherwise as hollow as a soda straw, so glaringly devoid was it of bare mention of the largest urban renewal project in the U.S. at Minneapolis, designed to further our city's reputation as the most beautiful metropolis in America.
MARTIN B. THIEDE Executive Vice President International Properties Inc. Minneapolis
Sir:
TIME says that Collins is the ablest mayor Boston has had "since James Michael Curley first flexed his young muscles."
It was John B. Hynes, former mayor of Boston (for ten years), who twice defeated Curley, brought the Prudential Center to Boston, created the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and laid the groundwork for many of the projects now underway in the Collins administration.
I therefore nominate John B. Hynes as the ablest mayor of the city of Boston, bar none.
THOMAS J. HYNES JR.--Boston Sir:
I just finished your cover story on cities, and I loved every word of it. I was born in Boston. I was raised in Boston. Like so many others, I got married and ran to suburbia. Well, I've had it. I am still married, but I'm back in Boston. Hooray for the city, and phooey to suburbia.
SEYMOUR M. GOLDBERG Boston
Winning Chemistry?
Sir: Here at the University of Arizona, we students have a simple formula for enthusiasm toward conservatism [March 16]: AuH20 in MCMLXIV.
RAY LINDSTROM Tucson, Ariz.
Amriki Rani
Sir:
Perhaps the Indians hailed Mrs. Kennedy as the Amriki Rani or Queen of America [March 23] because they heard many Americans would like to "crown" her husband. JUNE ORNSTEEN Gladwyne, Pa.
Sir:
Can we have Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy on your cover again, please? She is President Kennedy's greatest asset, and the U.S.'s best
-- Nephew of former Mayor Hynes. ambassador. How we in Europe would like to be able to say she is one of us. She is certainly everybody's idea of a beautiful woman.
B.M.C. O'BOYLEN Ballybofey, Ireland
Sir:
May I voice what my 17-year-old daughter tells me is most assuredly a minority opinion: I think the fashions of Jacqueline Kennedy are ridiculous in a woman of her position, responsibilities and age.
Bows at the back of the head and sailor hats would be precious if she were eight. But when she reached ten, it would seem that good taste, intelligence and a dawning restraint would have caused her to "cool it."
And her skirts are too short.
(MRS.) ALMENA LOMAX Los Angeles
Republican Chance
Sir:
While I agree that it would be highly improbable for the Republicans to gain control of the Senate in 1962, it is not "mathematically impossible," as you state in your March 16 issue. If the party held all 16 Republican seats up for re-election and took all 21 Democratic seats, the G.O.P. would have a 57-43 majority.
PATRICK KELLEY Creighton University Omaha
>>TIME should have said"politically unlikely," since seven of the 21 Democrats running for re-election are from "no-contest" Southern states.--ED.
Sir: Leave "Ev and Charlie" alone. They are doing a tremendous job. They are real Republicans. So what if Ev has curly hair. And it is easy for Charlie to powder his red nose. The late Sam Rayburn was as bald as a billiard ball. I never heard any criticism of Sam. He did his job for the Democrats very well. Ev and Charlie are doing equally well for the Republicans.
ANNA V. MCCAFFREY Cambridge, Mass. Sore Eros Sir: Your merciless lambasting of Eros [March 23] proves what enlightened people already know about your magazine: it is a dazzling editorial product with a predictably narrow viewpoint, and at the core, it is rotten.
RALPH GINZBURG Editor Eros New York City
Ministers' Corner
Sir:
TIME [March 23] is holding out on two winning Nim combinations: 7-5-2 and 7-4-3.
ALEXANDER RUTCHKA Boston
>>Reader Rutchka's combinations are winners, but any Nim game can be won by using the 18 combinations given in TIME'S diagram. If he wishes, however, he can substitute his combinations for 6-5-3 and 6-4-3-1 in diagram and still win any game.--ED.
Sir: The match game is no game for a blind man. Player A could have easily crushed Player B by simply taking one match from the row below [leaving 2-2-1] instead of the two matches he chose in move three. The move made was as disastrous as the system suggested by Movie Critic Bosley Crowther. He can come to my bar and play his system for drinks any time he wants to; I would not need much money.
Russ LE BLANC Detroit >Reader Le Blanc needs more money than he thinks. If he picks up one match from the middle row of a 2-3-1 combination, Player B will pick up one match from the third row, leaving 2-2.--ED.
Sir: I'll wager a bottle of good bourbon that 4-3-2 is also a winning combination in Nim.
R. M. SULLIVAN
Alfred, N. Y.
>TIME picks up three matches from the top row, leaving 1-3-2, a winning combination, and takes the bourbon.--ED.
Sir: I hope the hell you're happy. Now every boob in the world will know how to play.
C. D. MOLLO
P. H. ASKLING New York City >See above.--ED.
The Changing Name Sir: The writer who penned "Melting the Pot"[March 23] deserves plaudits for his definitive coverage of the commercial alter ego.
One overlooked paradox: Joan Crawford (Our Dancing Daughters) was forced to change her name to a more girl-next-door appellation because her real name was too showy--Lucille Le Sueur.
LARRY SHIELDS Savannah
Sir: Re Henry Willson's renaming of Hollywood stars--Rock, Tab, etc.--the climax will come when he brings forth Stark Naked.
GILBERT BROWN Los Angeles
Sir:
So I got tired of Allen Smith.
JUN SCZESNOCZKAWASM New Canaan, Conn.
Sir:
I have always been called Rip by most of my male friends, Tony by most of my female friends, and Dodo (an extinct bird) by my grandchildren. Both my son Rip's and my forename is really Elmore. Rip is a nickname a Torn would receive, as surely as Dusty would be attached to the surname of Rhodes.
Mr. Henry Willson notwithstanding, I think Rip Torn is a real and substantive name for an actor, and always will be.
ELMORE R. TORN Taylor, Texas
Education Crisis
Sir:
Am sure countless U.S. educators were dismayed with TIME'S discussion of "Standards for Noah's Ark?" [March 16] pleading for increased federal quasi-control of public schools. Rickover missed the point, i.e., our commitment to principles of Jeffersonian democracy and the local wisdom and dedication that have produced American public schools second to none without benefit of a national curriculum. The solution to the U.S. education crisis is not through variations of reform conjured up by a Washington, D.C., elite. Reform must stem from the opposite direction. Provide tax assistance to deprived areas, but spare them Rickover's delusion of omniscience.
DR. PAUL P. MOK Bronxville, N.Y.
>Psychologist Mok is the author of A View From Within: American Education at the Crossroads of Individualism.--ED.
Sir: I thought "Standards for Noah's Ark?" was an excellent unbiased roundup of a complex and urgent problem in U.S. education.
EWALD TURNER President National Education Association Washington, D.C.
Sir: TIME'S account of the debate on national scholastic standards was excellent. As chairman of the Democratic Advisory Council's committee on education, I recommended a Council of Educational Advisors to the President, comparable to the Council of Economic Advisors.
Such a council would not involve any new federal power, nor the loss of any power by local and state boards of education; but it could help build a national consensus on educational goals and standards.
WILLIAM BENTON Publisher & Chairman Encyclopaedia Britannica New York City Sir: I see by your Education section that Admiral Rickover is at it again. It amazes me that an individual whose lifetime career has been the military can become an expert on education. As for a nationalized curriculum, I hardly believe a Kansas farm boy needs the same material that a New York City youth requires. The primary goal of U.S. education is to develop American citizens. In this it has not failed.
ROBERT L. BALLANTYNE Milton, Fla.
Macaulay Letters
Sir:
The review of Letters to a Friend [March 16] may give a wrong impression of Father Hamilton Johnson's responsibility for their publication. Miss Babington-Smith was collecting Miss Macaulay's letters. Father Johnson, in his eighties and far from well, was unable to make a selection. He entrusted all that he had kept to her, with permission to use what she thought suitable. He pictured a volume containing letters to many persons, not a volume given over entirely to letters to himself. Miss Babington-Smith may have been quite right in publishing them in this way, but in fairness to Father Johnson, it should be known that he did not contemplate this. He died on March 17, 1961.
ROLAND F. PALMER, S.S J.E. Cambridge, Mass.
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